Free Highland Awakening by Jennifer Haymore

inflection of her voice. One would think she’d be able to be herself with this man—she’d known him all her life, after all.
    She held out her gloved hand to him and he brought it to his mouth and kissed the back, his touch light, almost limp. Every time Mr. McLeod had touched her, his touch had been firm, strong. He’d taken control.
    No, she mustn’t compare Henry and McLeod. That wasn’t at all a good idea.
    “You look lovely this evening.”
    “Thank you.” She was wearing a new dress that had been delivered just this afternoon. It was a light-blue silk with the usual high waist and cap sleeves but a bit of flare to the skirt, and darker blue satin ribbon trim.
    He took one of the armchairs near the window. Esme poured the tea and was proud that she spilled only a few drops—unlike the last time he’d come and she’d dumped half his cup onto the floor before it reached him. He’d been very kind about that. He’d always been kind to her, which was more than she could say about the majority of the members of the
ton.
    You’re rationalizing,
a voice inside her said.
McLeod is right—you don’t love this man.
    She handed him his tea and sat in the chair across from him, the low table between them. Henry was handsome—but in a different way from McLeod. He was light where McLeod was dark, soft where McLeod was sharp.
    No! She
must
stop comparing them. Immediately.
    They sipped in silence, until Esme fidgeted, her mind scrambling fruitlessly to conjure some relevant topic of discussion.
    “So,” Henry finally said, “I was surprised to see Mr. McLeod here last night. I wasn’t aware your families were close.”
    Oh dear. This would not have been Esme’s choice for conversation. She would have to tread carefully to not give away her confused feelings.
    “I believe my brother had expressed some interest in becoming reacquainted with Mr. McLeod. Evidently, he’s been away with the army for several years.” Good, that sounded just as it should have, she thought.
    “Yes, he has.”
    “How do you know him?” The words popped out of her, and she clenched her hands before releasing them. The question was merely a politeness. Henry wouldn’t think it too forward, surely.
    “We went to Eton together. For almost ten years.”
    “You are the same age?” she asked. For some reason, McLeod seemed older than twenty-nine.
    “Almost exactly, as I recall. Our birthdays are a month apart.”
    “So you knew him well?”
    “Yes. But we weren’t the best of friends. McLeod was…” His lips thinned as he considered how to say whatever it was he wanted to say. “Well, he was rather a hell-raiser.”
    She tried to swallow down a snort of laughter, but failed. What emerged was an embarrassing grunting noise. Heat flaming her face, she attempted to continue. “For some reason, that doesn’t surprise me.”
    Henry raised a brow. “It doesn’t? Why not?”
    “Oh…ah…well, he gives off the air of hell-raisery, I suppose.” Goodness, hell-raisery? She should just stop talking altogether.
    “I suppose he does,” Henry said. “He was always getting into trouble in school—and he was always caught, which seemed to make little difference in his desire to flout the rules. He was also stubbornly…
Scottish.
”
    She raised her brows. “He
is
Scottish, isn’t he?” It felt like a foolish question. But what else would Henry expect from a Scot?
    Henry rolled his eyes. “He insists on being Scottish—adopting the brogue, speaking of his homeland like it’s heaven on earth. He never stopped complaining that he couldn’t wear a kilt at Eton.”
    “I hear Scots do like their kilts,” she murmured.
    “But he was raised in London. He rarely visited Scotland as a child, and I think his mother was English. He’s almost as English as you and me.”
    “But his father is a Scottish earl, isn’t he? That makes him a Scot, surely.”
    “I suppose, technically, but it’s the principle. He couldn’t deign to be